Postmodernism and Cultural Identities

Virgil Nemoianu's book starts from the assumption that, whether we like it or not, we live in a postmodern environment, one characterized by turbulence, fluidity, relativity, commotion, uncertainty, and lightning-fast communication and change. One question raised under these circumstances is whether we have thus entered an age of 'posthistory', one radically different from whatever happened in the past 10,000 years or so, or whether our present continues to be understandable by the methods of the philosophy of culture. The other important question is whether inside the postmodernist turmoil we can discover islands of stability, durability, continuity, and coherence. In answering such questions Nemoianu provides examinations of a political, religious, and aesthetic (particularly literary) nature. The book draws the conclusion that relativity and skeptical uncertainty themselves require such components of coherence and stability to prevent postmodernity from turning into uniformity and predictability. To the extent that most, or even all, things are considered carriers of truth, their opposite (the cultural identities) must also be granted the very same privilege. The 'adversarial' islands are engaged in a complex network of relations with their tempestuous surroundings, thereby ironically vindicating them by contrast. Hope is emphasized as the prominent and fundamental virtue of our time, and as the bridge connecting past, present, and future. The epilogue of the book suggests a tentative and subjective model of a defensive 'philosophical garden' which might help the reader imagine how to find appropriate protection - by isolation and creative interaction at the same time - in a world of chaos and disorder.